Nighttime - different expectations with nappies vs. pull-ups?

[NuluTea9]

Bit embarrassed to be asking this... but, for an older child, who's fully potty trained during the daytime, but still wets at night very frequently--

Would you suggest different rules/expectations, depending on whether or not he's wearing pull-ups vs a standard nappy, at night?

For a bit of context:

We'd always treated nighttime pull-ups as a 'just in case' sort of thing, with my son. Meaning, if he happened to wake up, and needed to wee, the hope was that he'd get out of bed and go to the loo. (which he'd do, on occasion)

However, now that we're back to proper nappies at night (the pullups were leaking almost every other night) - suspect that now, he's more likely to just drift awake and wee in his nappy, then go back to sleep. He's straight up told us that he does this.

What do we do here..? Anything?

It's really normal for children to be dry at night a lot later than in the daytime. I don't think there's much you can do about it tbh.

How old is he?

How old is he?
Yes, the expectations are different, it'll be quite tricky for him to go for a wee and then put a nappy back on.
Depending on age, I'd buy the nighttime pants and go up a size.
If you genuinely think that he's actually waking to pee, then maybe it might be time to trial a night with a waterproof mat underneath?

Whoops, apologies! He's 5.

I probably should have clarified a bit, but-- generally, he does NOT wake up to wee in the middle of the night yet, per se. He's very much our 'deep sleeper'.

My actual concern is more first thing in the morning, when he's sort of just starting to drift awake. That's when we've noticed that a lot of the time he's doing a sleepy pee, right as he's kind of half-awake.

If he’s making it through the night completely dry and it’s just a sleepy morning wee, my DD did this although she was younger so I think it’s pretty common, then just wake him up 10 minutes earlier and rush him straight to the loo. So DD normally woke at 7, we’d wake her at 6.50 and take her to the loo, pull up was always dry. After a week we took away the pull ups but continued waking her. After another week we stopped waking her and she started taking herself. Just needed to break the habit! So you could try that. If, however, he’s also weeing overnight then he isn’t ready yet and I would leave it for now. But I would try different brands/sizes of nappy pants/pull-ups because I think it’s important that the opportunity is there for him to use the loo independently whenever he’s ready and taped nappies don’t allow for this.

Unfortunately, we're pretty much 100% certain that he's still for sure weeing at night. He sleeps like a ROCK (unlike his brother...)

We actually were using pull-ups (spiderman drynites and the nappy pants) before, but we were having headaches with those, because he'd end up leaking out of them, almost every other night. DESPITE us limiting drinks before bedtime.

Completely down to see if we can't get him up just a touch later though! So long as we don't wake up our youngest in the process haha!

Drynites! That was the brand I was trying to remember 😆 What size is he in? My daughter was in drynites at night until age 6, but was in the 8+ size for absorbency. Despite her being quite skinny, they fitted fine, it's worth a try 😊

We were actually using the 3-5 age spiderman ones! I still have no clue how on earth this was happening, but-- he'd leak out of those more than even the standard, basic pull-ups! NO idea why....??

They seemed to fit him right, the next size up would be huge on him, I'd think. But...for sure willing to try!

It's a bit frustrating, because the size 7-8 nappies actually seem to fit him just about perfect I've found, and don't leak! But - there's obviously downsides of them being tabbed nappies clearly.

5 isn’t that old. Many kids (especially deep sleeping boys) are in pull-ups until 9 or 10 (which is when GPs get interested). Important to keep the shame levels low, and the emotion out of it. I personally would just leave him in pull-ups (they make bigger older ones) and let him sleep. Some people use alarms etc to force the child up and have good results. Would have stressed out and upset my kid.

I always found dry nights to be far less absorbing than supermarket nappy pants.

My almost-5-year old wears nappy pants at night time and definitely still wees in his sleep. He wears suze 8, which are readily available in supermarkets now, and cheaper if own brand. 10 years ago I needed size 8 for my older child and had to order online from specialist shops!

In your situation I would get supermarket pull ups in size 8, and encourage him to get up and go to the loo when he wakes up. I wouldn’t worry about or try to discipline the “sleepy morning wee” thing, as eventually he will want to ditch the nappy pants and then he is unlikely to sleepy wee in the morning because it’ll make his bed uncomfortable!

Try a different brand of pull ups. We've never had a leak with Dry Nites, but have a leak every single time we use Huggies pull ups.